Family Ties
by celticfox
Summary: In all his many, many years of traveling, the Doctor had been threatened by many beings, in many languages, but this was the first time he had been threatened by a ten-year-old human girl.


**I wrote this some time ago- it was a huge amount of fun, and I think it's pretty good. Please review, and remember, I own nothing but my pathetic little brain waves. And some microwave tortellini.**

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In all his many, many years of traveling, the Doctor had been threatened by many beings, in many languages, but this was the first time he was being threatened by a ten-year-old human girl. Well, he assumed she was ten years old. He didn't have much experience in these matters.

She had pigtails. Brown hair in pigtails. Tied with ribbons. And she was wearing corduroy overalls. And pink sneakers. Standards had definitely gone down.

She was standing in the doorway of his frankly magnificent timeship, and she did not look at all amazed by its infinite proportions. Instead she looked extremely annoyed. Had the Doctor been a little less high-minded he might have thought she looked 'pissed'. At any rate, he was getting a terrible feeling of foreboding. A premonition of doom. This little girl spelled Trouble. With a capital T.

He felt he should take some action. Do something decisive. In the end, he fell back on simply Saying Something.

"What," he began (a nice promising word, that, good beginning to a sentence), "are you doing, on my spaceship?"

The little girl brightened. "So it_is _a spaceship, then! Fantastic! Finally, a way off this stupid planet! I am _so_sick of these stupid apes."

The Doctor was rarely shocked, but he gradually became aware that his jaw had dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of his shoes. He quickly picked it back up and screwed it into place. _"What?" _he gibbered.

She sighed, rolling her eyes. "Do I _have _to spell it out for you? I'm an alien."

Brain the size of a planet, and he can't seem to get his mind around this fact. "You're... an alien." Oh, great, now he's turned into a gibbering moron, capable only of mimicking others. What happened to his great Gift of Gab?

Rolling the eyes again. "Yes, I'm an alien." She strolled further into the TARDIS, examining data banks. "Hey, nice ship."

"Thank you," he says automatically. Then his brain cells kick in again. "But you look human!"

"Well, _duh. _So do you." He can't deny the logic of this.

She wanders over to the 'Captain's Chair' and sits down, kicking her feet against the bars. "Don't worry, I'm not, like, some invading blue dude or something. Just a _kid _alien. I think."

"What do you mean, _I think?" _Well, at least he sounded slightly more intelligent now. No more of the mocking-bird.

She spun around on the chair, having discovered its swivel properties. "Well... for a while I thought I was human. I didn't catch on for a while. I was born and raised in England. Gosh, this explanation stuff is boring." She leaned over his main computer, idly tracing a Gallifreyan spiral rune with one fingertip.

He blinked. Obviously he had a delusional nutcase on his hands. Although apparently children were like that all the time and it was called 'imagination'. "And how," he said carefully, "do you know you're an alien?"

She ticked off her fingers. "I'm stronger and faster than everyone else. I have a lower body temperature. The big giveaway was probably when I didn't grow for about forty years." She smiled brightly. "Oh, and did I mention I can hypnotize people?"

He blinked again. "Okay, maybe you are an alien. If that's true, we have to find your parents. But I don't want to be accused of kidnapping if you're actually just a human. Let's go down to the medical room and check."

She shook her head. "Bo-_ring. _Let's do something fun instead." She pulled a lever hard. The ship slid into the Vortex, jolted, did a 360 degree flip, and screeched, finally going pitch dark. The timeship screamed inside his mind.

"What the hell did you do do my ship?!!" he demanded to know.

She smiled, and now there was a sinister cast to it. "Just wanted a little peace and quiet, so we could... discuss things, in private. Didn't want you_going _anywhere. And of course I didn't want this gossipy outdated piece of scrap metal listening in on our conversation."

Okay, he didn't care whether she looked human. She had crossed the line. She had insulted his ship. His amazing, beautiful ship he'd been with for most of his life. Now she was in trouble. "Look here, young lady-" he began, with as much authority in his voice as he could muster.

"You just don't get it, do you?" she asked, jumping down from her seat. "I'm not a young lady. I'm over fifty years old. For most of that time I've been hiding away on the outskirts of human civilization, the only alien on the planet. I was an outsider from the moment of my birth. And eventually I came to realize that my horrible little life was the entire fault of just one person. You." Her large green eyes glinted with malevolence.

"Impossible." But with an awful sinking feeling he realized it might in fact be true. He'd touched the lives of so many, albeit inadvertently, and his influence was not always for the good. He was the Doctor, and sometimes his prescribed medicine was lethal.

"Oh, it's very, very possible," the apparently young girl said, mimicking his thoughts. She leaned forward, her voice barely above a whisper, as her lips formed her final killing word. _"Grandfather."_

Shock gripped every muscle in his body. "W-what?" he stammered. Always was fond of that word. After 'who'.

She leaned back. "Although technically I suppose it's Great-grandfather," she said, her tone now one of casual boredom. She was using her words as weapons, deftly cutting him with every syllable. Her voice was flat as she delivered a deep blow. "You killed my mother."

The Doctor collapsed on the harsh grating of the TARDIS floor, his back to the console. "Susan?" he whispered in disbelief. "Your mother was Susan?"

"I was five years old when my mother left," she said, her voice now full of pain and anger. "I overheard you talking. You took her from her people before she was old enough to earn her third syllable, you dragged her around on your pathetic little travels, you dumped her on a barbarian planet and as if that wasn't enough you showed up a decade later and took her to her death. Because of you she died by Dalek death ray. I heard her dying screams. But you weren't even there."

"How... how do you know this?" he said, his face pale, all blood drained away.

"Mother told me about her life before you took her," she explained cruelly. "We had quite a close psychic bond, though I was only half Gallifreyan. I knew exactly when she died. Her last thought was despair that you had abandoned her."

He clutched at his head. "Why are you doing this to me, you sadistic child?"

She shook her head. "I could ask you the exact same thing. Why did you ruin my life, like you ruined my mother's?"

He raised his head. "Susan told you I'd ruined her life?"

"Of course not. She hero-worshipped you, the naïve innocent fool. But we know different, don't we?"

"I'm so sorry," he said, almost sobbing. "I never knew she had a child, she never said, if I'd known I promise I would have-"

"Would have let her stay?" she asked. "I don't think so. You loved duty, you turncoat. You made this big show of being a rebel, but inside you loved running about doing the Council's duty. You were so quick to volunteer to kill for the President."

"You don't understand," he said, trying to make her see things his way. That was now vitally important. "That President was different. She-"

"It doesn't matter," the young Gallifreyan said. She smiled with cruelty evident in her eyes, about to deliver a mortal blow. "Because in the end you just couldn't wait to murder them all."

With cold clarity, the Doctor at last saw the truth. At last he was being judged for his great crime by someone who understood the sheer enormity of it. At last he was found guilty by someone other than himself. Perversely, it felt like a great weight off his shoulders. At last, someone who would hate him like he deserved. It was a relief. Those stupid little apes never could comprehend the horror of what he had done, but this little girl both could and would. At last.

He felt he should make at least some show of defense. "I had to, or else the Daleks would-"

She rolled her eyes again. "Sure, right. Never seemed to bother you before. That whole war could have been ended so easily." Her eyes bored into him. "If only you hadn't gotten there first."

Ah. Right. The Davros thing. He'd almost forgotten. "I couldn't commit genocide," he mumbled, unable to meet her piercing eyes.

"Really," she drawled. "It didn't seem to present a problem later."

He couldn't bear this. He jumped up with a show of energy. "Well, my dear," the Doctor said, "-what is your name?"

She looked at him warily. "Barbara," she said eventually. He tried not to wince at the familiar name.

"Well, hello, Barbara! I'm the Doctor, as I think you already know. Nice to meet you, great to catch up, loved the chat, but I'm afraid I've got to go now. You know how it is, people to meet, empires to topple, planets to save..." He leaped forward and pressed a button. With another agonizing screech, the lights came back on again. He pulled the bicycle pump to start dematerializing. However, no welcome rumbling sound or flashing blue pillar met his ears or eyes. Barbara was tapping her foot, arms folded, a smirk on her face.

"What do you want?" he cried.

"I should think it was obvious," she said. "Your death."

He stared.

She tapped a button. "In a moment I will press this," she said calmly, "and the doors of this TARDIS will open. You will be sucked out into the void, where you will either immediately die, go mad, or get eaten by one of the many and various Time-Lord eating creatures living in the Vortex, because you are heavier than me and are not," she tapped her foot again, "wearing magnetic shoes."

His horrified eyes met her cruel green ones. He lunged for the console, but not in time. She pressed the button. "Goodbye, _Doctor."_

And then there was nothing but the howl of the Vortex.

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**Ha. Ha. Ahahahahheh. evil author laugh Review, and you will be spared when the Daleks invade Earth!**


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